dethroned Herod, arraigned the high-priest and sanhedrim, and crucified Pilate, chose to be on the suffering side, rather than employ his power in forcing the assent, or compliance of any man. Are they the followers or representatives of Christ, whose cruelty is thus glaringly condemned, both by his words and actions? As there is no one crime which natural humanity, and our holy religion so thoroughly detest, as bloodshed and murder, so no church can, by any other mark, more evidently prove itself an adversary to Christ, and Christianity, than by the scarlet colour left on it, after a scene of persecution and slaughter. Whether it is in this kind of red ink that the mark of the beast, that persecuted the woman and her seed, is written on the foreheads, or right hands of his followers, I leave the sacred critics to judge; but the conjecture seems highly probable.

Let the last mark of a corrupt church be this, that she forbids the free use of the Scriptures. If God hath been pleased to write his mind to mankind, who shall dare to stop the way between his pen and their eyes? Since he knows. infinitely better how to speak to the understandings and hearts of his hearers than men do, and can speak with authority, surely he should be heard. He who made the tongue, shall he not speak? he who made the ear, shall he not be listened unto? Although, as the talents of men are different, one man may understand him better than another, and more clearly explain his meaning, yet how shall the less knowing judge, whether it is his meaning or not, if they are not permitted to see his words? Is no part of his word intelligible to the capacities of the illiterate? If any part of it is, why the whole shut up? Hath he himself any where said, that the learned only shall read the Scriptures? No; on the contrary, all sorts of people are expressly commanded to read and meditate on the law, and to teach their children therein. They who do this are pronounced happy, in the first Psalm. Nay, he is said to be blessed, that readeth and heareth even the deep and mysterious revelation of St. John; and all this without any distinction, or exception, in regard to the unlearned. 'Seek ye out,' saith Isaiah, the book of the Lord, and read.' 'Search the Scriptures,' saith our Saviour, for in them ye think ye have eternal life.' Here the ignorant are not excepted; and good reason, for they stand

most in need of God's instructions. The Bereans at large are commended for daily reading and searching the Scriptures, whether those things' which the apostles taught, and proved by miracles, 'were so,' as they set them forth, or not. St. Paul calls on the Ephesians at large also, to 'judge of his knowledge in the mystery of Christ, by the dispensation of the grace of God given to him for their edification.' He likewise desires them all, laity as well as clergy, ignorant as well as knowing, to take the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God,' no less than the shield of faith,' and the other parts of the sacred armour. He orders his Epistle to the Colossians to be read publicly in their church, or con gregation, and then in that of the Laodiceans. He says also, in his first Epistle to the Thessalonians, I charge you, by the Lord, that this epistle be read unto all the holy brethren.' The same apostle sets it down, as highly to the honour of Timothy, that from a child he had known the holy Scriptures, which were able to make him wise unto salvation, through faith which is in Christ Jesus.' And who were his guides and assistants in this great and necessary work? Not a learned priest, or scribe; not his father who was a Greek, and probably a Pagan, at least when Timothy was a child; but his grandmother Lois, and his mother Eunice, whose faith is commended as the source of his. Here is a person commended for reading the Scriptures in his childhood, under the instructions of two women, who must have read the sacred books themselves, or they could not have taught him to do it. The Ethiopian eunuch, who was but a neophyte, or new proselyte, was so intent on the Scriptures, that he read them by the way in his chariot,' though he did not understand the passage he studied. But God was so well pleased with what he did, that he brought Philip to instruct and baptize him; and so blessed the well-meant, though weak endeavours of this devout person, as to make them the occasion of conversion to a whole nation. Apollos, who was a man eloquent, and mighty in the Scriptures, having been already tinctured with Christianity, had the way of God more perfectly expounded to him by Aquila, and his wife Priscilla,' two tent-makers; which could not possibly have been done by these trades-people, had they not been first well versed in the Scriptures themselves. Here

we see it was the will of God that all should read his word, and that all did read it, at a time when they had inspired teachers, and consequently were under infinitely less necessity of depending on the written word, than the same sort of people are now-a-days, when, God knows, their teachers of all sorts are far enough from infallibility.

It is with a great deal more of policy than of either honesty or piety, that the church of Rome forbids the laity, unless licenced, to read the Scriptures; because, if such a liberty were allowed and taken, all the marks of corruption and imposture charged in this discourse on that church, together with many others, must be found condemned therein as such, and a wide door thereby thrown open for the reformation.

But that church says, it is not with any apprehension of such effects, that she locks up the Scriptures; but to prevent the infinite errors, and wild or wicked extravagances, arising from a promiscuous perusal of those books among the ignorant. We confess the vulgar perusal of the sacred writings hath been, and still may be attended with this mischief; but we insist that the common people are not a whit more apt to extract the poison of heresy and schism from the wholesome flowers of God's word, than the learned, who, in all ages of the church, have been the chief broachers and abettors of pestilent opinions. It is in the writings of polemical divines and commentators, that we find the Scriptures most shamefully wrested, and forced to speak a language foreign to the intention of their author. Besides, while the vulgar are under the greatest difficulties in propagating their mistakes, the learned and the eloquent can spread theirs, as far as the fame of their great abilities is extended. It follows, therefore, that if the word of God is to be shut against the common people, because they may mistake its meaning in some places, while they profit infinitely by it in others, it ought, for a stronger reason, to be shut also against the learned; who, if they are less apt to mistake, are however, incomparably more disposed to pervert its meaning, in order to serve the purposes of a party, to enhance the credit of their learning, by victories won in the field of controversy, and to coin new systems of religion accommodated to their luxuriant fancies and affections. If

the illiterate ought not to read the gospel, neither ought they to hear it preached; for sure I am, it is much safer for the people to hear God speak in his own words, than to hear those who, in these times at least, pretend to speak for him. We may, I think, without a breach of modesty, insist, that one who can only read, will be in much greater danger of being misled by an ordinary sermon, than by a chapter of the Bible.

But, to cut all this short, which is but human reasoning at the best, and therefore may be precarious and undecisive, God, as I have shewn, hath commanded all men to read his word; from whence it follows, that whatsoever church forbids it, high as her claim of infallibility may be carried, she proves herself, by so doing, not only erroneous, but impious, and ought to be answered in the words of Peter, and the other apostles, 'we ought to obey God rather than men.' Shall God order our light, such as it is, to shine before men, and suffer his own, from which alone ours can be borrowed, to be put under a bushel? What can men mean by keeping the word of God, and the office whereby they publicly wor ship him, in an unknown tongue, if it is not, lest, in case both were understood, the former should condemn the latter too palpably, to escape the notice of the most illiterate? And, to say no more on this head, what shall the most ignorant and bigotted members of a church do, as to the duty of conforming with her, or dissenting from her, when they see her compelled to such expedients? Why, she tells them, they must be damned, if they do not absolutely renounce, to all religious intents and purposes, the uninfluenced use of their own sense and reason and of the word of God. And to what end, but that they may, against the express commands of God, pray to creatures; fall down before graven images; believe that bread is flesh and wine blood; believe that every paltry trick is a miracle; that venal indulgences may serve for righteousness or repentance; and that the just and gracious God will reward them with the joys of heaven for cutting the throats of their neighbours, and burning their fellow-creatures alive, merely because they cannot agree with them in thinking all this mass of absurdity wisdom; and this scene of cruelty a service acceptable to the

God of all mercies? Can they possibly believe their salvation depends on a faith like this?

No; none but the most stupid or abandoned among them have recourse to hopes so strangely founded. There are millions of sensible and worthy men in that communion, who have indeed a mere speculative faith in these things, or rather think they believe them, though in reality they do not, as is manifest from the goodness of their lives, whereby it appears, that they lay little or no stress on them. There are also many of them, who, like Erasmus, Cassander, and father Paul, have knowledge enough to see the folly, and goodness enough to detest the wickedness, of such principles; and yet judge it better to continue as they are, than to break with a church, wherein, notwithstanding their objections to her, they think they may be saved. You see these men going to mass, you see them on their knees before a crucifix, or an image of the blessed Virgin; you ask them, whether they think it possible for one, who dies in a great measure impenitent and unreformed, to be saved by the help of posthumous masses; or whether the commands of the pope and the church can sanctify the private murder, or public massacre, of Protestants; and they answer, perhaps, with their church, they believe they may. But, if you consider them in their lives and conversations, you will find this was all pure speculation, which they dare by no means, nor in any measure, trust to; for the men live as if they thought it impossible to be saved, without a good life, or a thorough reformation. And such is their innate humanity, and truly Christian charity, that ten thousand commands of the pope and church could not prevail on them to stain their hands in blood. This they owe to natural good dispositions, and the sounder principles of their religion. They swallow their religion as a healthy man does food, consisting of wholesome and noxious ingredients, too indiscriminately, but so however, as to be nourished by that which is good, and to pass off that which is bad without taking it into the habit.. Quite contrary is the effect in a mind naturally unsound, or predisposed to superstition and vice. In this the wholesome food goes off undigested, while the mental poison, entering the circulation of thought and opinion, corrupts and assimilates the affections to itself.